Mary Emma & Company

by Ralph Moody

  Grace and Mother didn’t start their washing until Tuesday morning, and they didn’t have to rush with it the way they did the week before. Mrs. Humphrey sent a big basketful, with a note telling Mother to charge her double the regular laundry price for sheets and pillowcases and towels, but Mrs. Sterling sent only stiff bosomed shirts, cuffs, collars and fancy women’s clothes.

  That Tuesday when I came home for lunch Mother was worried about Mrs. Sterling’s bundle being so small, and about the way we were using up our ton of coal. “Good heavens,” she said, “that ton of coal is disappearing like dew before the sun! Nearly a quarter of it is gone since Friday, and it cost six dollars. We’ll have to keep the fire spanking right along to dry these clothes in the cellar, and it will take just as much coal for this small batch of Mrs. Sterling’s as it would for a big batch. My, I shall be thankful when the weather moderates enough that we can dry clothes in the back yard! I wonder, Gracie, if it was wise for me to have written those notes saying that we couldn’t afford to do flat work at laundry prices. There’d be an extra dollar in Mrs. Sterling’s work, even at laundry prices, if she’d sent all her flat pieces. That would just about pay for the coal we’ll burn today and tomorrow.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Gracie told her, “and I wouldn’t take any flat work at laundry prices if I were you. If we got ourselves loaded up with that kind of stuff we wouldn’t have room or time to handle the fancy work that we hope to get, and we might get the name of doing any old kind of washing.”

  “I know, Gracie, I know,” Mother told her, “but about all we have right now is hope that we’ll get more fancy work, and that furnace is eating coal like a steam engine. Maybe if we . . .”

  Grace had been biting her teeth hard together, and she sort of exploded when Mother got that far. “But we’re not going to!” she said. “With Mrs. Humphrey paying us double for flat work, we’ll come out as well this week as we did last, and how can we charge Mrs. Humphrey double and other people only single? And besides, this cold weather isn’t going to last forever. Before long we’re bound to get a thaw, and until that time comes we can run the furnace only on the days we’re drying clothes; the rest of the time the kitchen stove will give us all the heat we really need—if we go to bed early enough.”

  If I’d talked that way to Mother she’d have sent me right up to my room, but all she said to Grace was, “I suppose you’re right, dear, but I hate to think of our living cooped up in a kitchen when we have such a lovely house to enjoy. And, of course, spring will come sooner or later.”

  18

  Daredevil Grace

  IT MUST have been the mention of spring that made Mother remember the rubbish we’d carried out of the house and dumped in the back yard. She looked over at me and said, “Son, before this snow melts off and the lawn under it is ruined, we must get rid of all the rubbish we’ve piled up in our back yard. Do you have any idea as to how we could dispose of it?”

  “Sure, I do,” I told her. “There’s a great big clay pit beyond the field of bushes across the street. It’s about a mile deep, and everybody dumps their rubbish into it. I’ve taken half a dozen loads over there from the store. They don’t dig clay out of this pit any more, but from one down near the marshes. This one has a lake in the bottom, and the boys go skating over there when there’s no snow on the ice.”

  “Oh, if it’s that deep it must be dangerous,” Mother said quickly. “I’d thought Philip might haul some of our rubbish away on his sled, but I couldn’t let him go near a place like that.”

  “I’d be real careful,” Philip hurried to tell her, “and I wouldn’t have to go right up to the edge. I could dump it farther back, and then push it over the edge with our coal shovel.”

  “He wouldn’t even have to do that,” I told her. “It’s only in the places where the sides go straight down that it’s dangerous. Everybody dumps on the side where they used to take out the clay, and on that side the bank’s no steeper than an ordinary roof. If he should fall over the edge he couldn’t go five feet before a pile of rubbish would catch him.”

  “Mmmmm, hmmmm,” Mother said. “Maybe I’ll let you take him over there and show him where it is tomorrow noon, but don’t either of you go near the dangerous side under any circumstances. Now hurry right along with your lunch; Gracie and I must get back to our washing.”

  I hurried right home from school Wednesday noon, and Philip and I took the first load over to the clay pit. The bushes, as high as a man’s head, had kept the snow from drifting in the big field across the street from our house, so we didn’t have much trouble in pulling the sled, but when we got to the pit it seemed a shame to dump rubbish into it.

  I’d told Mother that the pit was a mile deep, but, of course, that was only talking. The lake was only about two hundred feet below the level of the brush field, and the top rim was almost perfectly round, an eighth of a mile from edge to edge. Most of the way around, the banks dropped almost straight down, but on the south side there was a steep causeway that reached out into the lake a hundred feet or more. Its top cut back through the upper edge of the pit between high clay walls. Al Richardson had told me there used to be a track on the causeway, and that the clay was pulled up to the brick sheds on little cable cars. The blizzard that we’d had must have dumped thousands of tons of snow into the pit, and whirled it around and round the high banks, like egg whites being whipped in a bowl.

  Philip and I were the first ones to go there after the storm. There wasn’t a footprint anywhere. As we pulled the sled up to the edge I couldn’t help catching my breath. It seemed as if we were the tiniest of pygmies, standing on the brim of a great, pure white cup that had been pushed down into the earth. Or maybe it was more like a white cream pitcher, with the causeway making the lip of the spout. The wind had whirled the snow around in such a way that the high, circular walls were completely covered, and the bank of snow at their base curved out to meet the flat field of white that covered the lake. “Let’s not dump this stuff over the edge and spoil it,” I told Philip. “Let’s dump it back here in the bushes, and after the snow is gone we’ll come and shovel it over the edge.”

  Thursday evening was sharp and clear, the snow squeaked under my rubbers as I walked home from work, and the full moon was so bright that, as I went from street light to street light, my shadow walked beside me. Except at the corners where the lights were bright, the shadows of the houses lay black on the white snow, and the bare limbs of the trees seemed to me like arms reaching up toward Heaven in prayer. As soon as I got home I asked Mother to put on her coat and come out to the yard with me, so she could see it.

  I think the moonlight must have done about the same thing to Mother that it did to me. When we were finishing supper she said, “Wouldn’t this be a glorious evening to go sleigh riding? When Father and I were courting, he used to take me riding whenever we had an evening like this; over the hills, and through the pine woods and birches. I can still hear the singing of the sleigh runners, and the jingling of the bells, and your father’s voice as it used to be when we were young.”

  For a minute or two Mother sat, sort of half-smiling and looking at the picture behind Hal’s chair as if she’d forgotten where she was. Then she said quickly, “Why don’t you children go sliding tonight, on Philip’s new sled? It would be a lovely evening for it.”

  “There are no hills around here,” Grace told her. “The nearest ones are the Fells, but the only place to slide there would be in the streets coming down the hillside, and that’s too dangerous. All those streets run into Fellsway Boulevard at the bottom, and automobiles go whizzing along at thirty miles an hour.”

  “I know a place,” I told her. “We could slide over at the clay pit; down the causeway where they used to pull clay up.”

  “Oh, that would be entirely too dangerous!” Mother said. “I couldn’t possibly let you do anything like that.”

  “Who’d want to slide in a clay pit anyway?” Grace asked. “I certainly wouldn
’t . . . not even if I was still young enough to go sliding.”

  “If I were,” Mother said, “not, if I was.”

  “Oh, don’t try to be so grown-up,” I said to Grace. “You won’t be fifteen till next month! And besides, the clay pit would be a good place to slide, and it wouldn’t be too dangerous, either. That causeway is as wide as an ordinary wagon road, and it isn’t much steeper than some of those streets up at the Fells. If you don’t want to go, I’ll take Philip and Muriel.”

  For some reason, Mother didn’t say, “No bickering!” when I snapped at Grace, so she yammered right back at me, “Well, go ahead and take them if you want to, but I’m not going to make a spectacle of myself by sliding down into an old clay pit!”

  “Oh, no,” Mother said, “I can’t let Ralph take the children alone. He’s entirely too impetuous, and takes too many daring risks. It’s a wonder he didn’t kill himself in Colorado with some of his trick-riding stunts. No. No. I can’t let him take the children alone, but if you were to go along, Gracie, I’d feel perfectly safe about them.”

  “Well, I’ll go if you want me to,” Grace told her, “but just to keep an eye on them; I’m not going to do any sliding. And before we start I wish you’d tell Ralph he has to mind me; he gets crazier than a chicken hawk when he’s out playing.”

  “You will do as Gracie tells you, won’t you, Ralph?” Mother asked me.

  “I will if she doesn’t try to get too bossy,” I told her, “and if she does, I’ll just come home.”

  “That’s all right,” Mother said. “Now run along and get your warm clothes on, all of you.”

  Hal was the first one to say, “Please excuse me,” and slide down off his chair, but Mother called him over to her and told him, “We’ll have a nice evening of reading, and tomorrow Philip will take you for a ride on his sled, but you’re a little young yet to go sliding.”

  Hal pulled himself up onto his tiptoes, so that his chin was as high as the table, and told her, “I’m big enough now, Mother, and I’ve got a warm cap with ear-lappers, and I’ll mind everything Grace tells me.”

  “I know,” Mother told him, “but it will probably be way past your bedtime before the others get home. You can go sometime when it’s daylight, but I’ll need you here to keep me company this evening. I must keep one man in the house, you know.” I thought Hal might cry, but he didn’t, and he was helping Mother clear the table when we left the house.

  In the moonlight, the pit was even more beautiful than it had been in daylight. We followed the path Philip had made in hauling rubbish, and all the way to the pit Grace acted like an old hen with a flock of chickens. When we reached the top of the causeway she wouldn’t let us slide down until she’d walked part of the way to be sure we wouldn’t run into anything. Then she made me sit at the front of the sled, with my feet on the steering bar. Next she put Muriel, with both arms wrapped around me, and Philip on the back. She wouldn’t give us a push-off until both Philip and Muriel had their feet tucked up, or until she’d told me a dozen times over to steer in close to the wall, and not to dare go anywhere near the steep fall-off.

  Grace didn’t give us a very good push-off, and the causeway wasn’t awfully steep right at the top, but with every foot we gained speed, and we must have been going a mile a minute when we reached the bottom. The steering bar sent snow flying like a blizzard, and we swooped more than halfway across the lake before we came to a stop. On our way back we walked three-abreast, and took short steps, to tramp the snow down and make a good runway. Grace gave us a better push-off on our second run. With the steering bar I could keep the sled right in the middle of the runway, and we were really flying when we hit the snow field at the bottom. We streaked out across the lake like a hurricane, hit the end of our first tracks in an explosion of flying snow, and didn’t stop until we’d run part way up the hard-packed drift at the foot of the far wall.

  It couldn’t have been more than half a minute from the time Grace gave us our push-off until we’d reached the far wall, but it took us at least ten minutes to walk back across the lake and climb the causeway. When we reached the top Grace was flailing her arms around her chest and looked to be about half frozen. “Let me have that thing a minute,” she said when I pulled the sled up beside her. “You’re wasting most of your time walking back.”

  Grace stood the sled up in front of her, looped the tow rope back loosely around the center boards, tied it, and stood holding the side bars just above the center. Before I had any idea what she was going to do she ran toward the top of the causeway, dived off over the edge, and landed belly-bump on the sled as it hit the snow. “Look out!” I yelled after her. “You’ve got to hold onto the cross bar to steer it!”

  Bright as the moonlight was, Grace was going so fast that I couldn’t see what she was doing with her hands. I could only see that the sled was leaving the runway before it was halfway down the narrow causeway, and that it was veering away from the wall and toward the drop-off. I tried to yell to her to get her hands up on the cross bar to steer it straight, but I was so scared I couldn’t make a sound. I could only stand there holding my breath as the sled skimmed along the very edge of the drop-off. Then it veered the other way, right toward the wall, at the top of the hard-packed drift that curved down to the snow field.

  I was so sure Grace would be killed that I shut my eyes for a moment, but when I opened them I could see the dark streak of the sled skimming around the high curved wall like a marble being whirled in a cup. The sled seemed to be lying almost on its side as it flew along, clinging to the line where the big drift began to curve out toward the snow field. Scared as I was, I had sense enough to know that a sled couldn’t do a thing like that all by itself. Grace had to have hold of the steering bar, and she had to be doing a whale of a fine job of steering. The sled skimmed along until I could see that it was beginning to slow down. Then Grace turned it in a wide curve, came shooting down the curve of the drift, and heading back toward the foot of the causeway. She came the last hundred yards in the runway we’d packed down on our first two slides, and she’d made a good start back up the causeway before the sled came to a stop.

  I was running before Grace turned the sled down from the wall, and I reached her a few seconds after she came to a stop. “What in the world did you do that for?” I shouted at her as she bounced to her feet. “It’s a wonder you didn’t kill yourself!”

  She was laughing like a little kid, and mopping the snow off her face. “Wheee, that was fun!” she squealed. “See, I told you you were wasting time! With a sled like this there’s nothing to it. I’ll betcha I could steer it through a blackberry patch without getting scratched by a sticker. Come on, let’s you and I try it together; then we’ll slide the children down the straight runway.”

  Muriel was so scared she was crying, and Philip was shaking all over when we pulled the sled to the top of the causeway. Grace had to lie to them a little, telling them there wasn’t the least bit of danger in the stunt she’d pulled, before they got over being scared. Then we took them for a ride down the straight runway, and pulled them back on the sled before Grace and I tackled the circle tour.

  “Half of it’s in getting a flying start,” Grace told me as we stood at the top of the causeway, “and it has to be done belly-bump, so you’ll be lying down and can get a good hard pull on the steering bar. There’s only one way I can think of for us to be running fast enough and both go belly-bump together. You stand right behind me, and I’ll count. One . . . two . . . three. . . . Go! Then, just one step before I’m going to dive, I’ll yell Go! again. If you take off as quick as you hear me, we might come down on the sled together. And if we don’t what’s the odds? We just pile up in the snow and skid a little ways.”

  Our take-off worked almost the way Grace had planned it, but not quite. I dived the instant I heard her yell, “Go!” But, without any sled to carry, I probably dived a little bit harder than she did. For a split second I thought I was going to sail clear over her, t
hen we banged down on the sled together, with my chest hitting her right between the shoulder blades. The air went out of her like a puffball that’s been stepped on, and the sled slewed crazily for a few yards. Then Grace got her hands on the steering bar and straightened us out, but we didn’t miss the edge of the drop-off by more than six inches. I had to hang on with my teeth and toenails as she made the bumpy turn across the straight runway, and then we were skimming along the wall. The sled was laid way over sideways, but instead of feeling as if I might slip off I was pressed down onto Grace harder than ever. It was probably my added weight that made the sled run faster, and it didn’t slow enough that Grace could turn it down the curve until we were way beyond the place where she’d turned the first time. Even at that, we came down the curve so fast that we were clear back to the foot of the causeway before we came to a stop.

  “Whewwww,” Grace whistled as she climbed up off the sled and rubbed her ribs, “you came down on me like a ton of bricks dropped out of the sky. How much candy have you been eating down at the store? I’ll bet you’ve gained ten pounds in just the few weeks you’ve been working there.”